


Let the past die ('cause I want a future with you)

by PearlsValeMel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo is back, But he doesn't remember anything, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Forgiveness, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Trost Arc, Redeemed Ben Solo, Resurrection, Soft Ben Solo, They fall in love again, the HEA we all deserved, the force ghosts actually do something right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21933610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PearlsValeMel/pseuds/PearlsValeMel
Summary: Ben is brought back to life, but there's something amiss. More specifically, his memory.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 104
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems, TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Would you know my name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But he knew her name, the man realized.  
> It clicked in his head effortlessly, vibrating through his chest and throat, finally reaching his lips, where it belonged.  
> "Rey."
> 
> In which the Force Ghosts of the Skywalker family actually save their last heir and bring Ben Solo back. Minus a small, insignificant detail: his memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I actually starting the new year with an attempt at a post-TROS Fix-it-fic? Apparently, yes. 
> 
> This fic was inspired by [this twitter post](https://twitter.com/freyasolo/status/1207511060045012995) by [@freyasolo](https://twitter.com/freyasolo)
> 
> Thanks to my wonderful beta-reader [1VulgarWoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1VulgarWoman/pseuds/1VulgarWoman)  
> (who is working on a fix-it-fic that I can't wait to read.

Poster by the amazing [@roguewn](https://twitter.com/roguewn)

_"Would you know my name_   
_If I saw you in heaven?_

_Would you hold my hand_   
_If I saw you in heaven?_

_I'll find my way through night and day_   
_'Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven"_

("Tears in Heaven", Eric Clapton)

_ My room feels wrong _

_ The bed won't fit _

_ I cannot seem to operate _

_ And you, my love, are gone _

_ So glide away on soapy heels _

_ And promise not to promise anymore _

_ And if you come around again _

_ Then I will take the chain from off the door _

("The Chain", Ingrid MIchaelson)

The silence was deafening. It buzzed and thrummed, taking shape in the void like mute insects swarming and bustling with life. 

There was no light nor darkness. Only intermittent blips, tiny, abysmal points of luminescence swirling and growing, stronger and steadier. Pulsing like a heartbeat, a brain wave, a spark of consciousness.

Then, the silence was not silent anymore. Something thrummed and itched on the surface, and the strangest thing was there was a surface, warm and solid, more tangible as the seconds - or were they ages? - passed. 

The void - not void anymore - gasped, fully grasping the sense of itself for the first time. 

_No, himself._

Something moved - an arm? An arm. Recognition sparked like a match, running through the making of nerves, veins, skin, and bones. 

This is a finger, this is is a leg, a chest expanding, breathe in with your nose, breathe out with your mouth. 

_Where am I?_ The not-void thought, marveling at the new concept of space. _Who am I_?

“It’s about damn time you finally decide that,” a gruff voice spoke, a hint of affection softening the sharp edges. 

Not enough to avoid the reprimand from another, feminine but stern timber. 

“Oh shut up, and leave him alone Luke!”

“Well, it’s the truth. The boy has so many names already it’s starting to get confusing...”

What was once void sighed in frustration, as the bickering continued, fading into white noise.

“The past can’t be changed,” a deep voice added out of the blue. 

The timber was unknown but familiar in a sense. As if it had spoken to him before, but dampened by something. Metal maybe. A mask, a breathing device - not that he knew what that was, the thought forming without reference in his brain. “But your memories aren’t your destiny. You deserve to decide who you want to be. You deserve to be free.”

Something grazed the top of his head, rough but tender like the caress of a parent.

“Get up, kid. You’re not done yet.”

All the voices and many others came to him clear as the light, powerful and _alive_. They thrummed all around and inside him, expanding his lungs with air, his veins with blood and fire. 

“What-” 

The not-void choked on his breath and marveled at the sound of his own hoarse voice. He tried to open his eyes, but something wet blurred his vision, wet and salty on his very human, very warm cheeks. 

“You know what you have to do.”

An image took shape beside him, its edges blurred and out of focus. A person. A name.

_Rey._

“After all,” one of the voices said, one last time, the hint of a smirk curling the sound and making it vibrate like the laughter of a young boy, “you swore to finish what I started.” 

Everything dissolved into darkness, and when the not-void finally opened his eyes he was, once again, just a man.

  
  


***

Routine was good. Steady, reliable. Unsurprising.

Repetition was what saved her on Jakku, what made her keep her sanity. 

Routine now was waking up at the first lights of the brighter star of Tatooine, having a consistent breakfast thanks to the rations left by Poe and Finn on their visit, cleaning and salvaging the moisture farm, one piece at a time. 

Rey did was she was the best at: scavenging and repairing. Creating and carving for herself a place to stay, a place to belong. 

Day after day, Luke’s former home emerged from the sand like the rising binary suns behind the dunes. After two weeks, when she finally managed to get one of the moisture vaporators to work, she screamed her relief into the wind.

She cleaned, tinkered, salvaged, repaired what was useful and gave a new purpose to what couldn’t be saved from the combined effort of the time and the desert. 

The same gestures, day after day, kept her grounded. They gave her a purpose.

For what, she didn’t know yet. 

Finn and Poe had tried to convince her to join them on a greener, less harsh planet. To help them fight the scattered remnants of the First Order and to rebuild the Galaxy from scratch, with hard work, freedom, and hope.

But she couldn’t. Not yet. 

The Force wanted her there, on Tatooine. She could feel it, taste it, in the scorching air of the planet. It was the same feeling that pervaded her when the Force bond opened between them. It was the cusp of anticipation, the deep breath before a jump. 

Rey paused as she cleaned and scruffed a dusty piece of another vaporator, gaze lost in the distance. A sick sense of deja-vu echoed in the hollow place inside her ribs, the one that was once full of _Ben Ben Ben_ , before he left her for good.

Giving her his life but taking her heart with him in the process, leaving only an empty, hardened shell behind.

The piece of metal dropped on the floor from her numb fingers, the sound deafening in the silence of the desert. 

Tears welled in her eyes, and Rey wiped them away before they could fall on the barren land, 

as she wrapped her ragged scarf around her face and hurried to prepare her speeder.

Water couldn’t be wasted in places like this. She knew better.

There was no bond now, void on the other side, a bridge to nowhere. It ached like a missing limb, one she didn’t even know she had in the first place.

It hurt like all things unborn, all wasted possibilities and untold stories.

She had tried to dispel that ache, taking for herself something that wasn’t hers, a name she could wrap around herself like a comforting blanket to protect her against loneliness and the hateful truth about her origins. 

But when the people of Mos Eisley greeted her on her frequent errands to the main town, that same name sounded hollow and wilted to her ears. 

_It wasn’t hers, like he had been._

As the speeder raced among the dunes, Rey let the scorching wind and the rough fabric wrapped around her face to dry her wet cheeks. 

She wished to see him one last time. Just once. Even his ghost, his spirit in the Force. A dream. It would be enough, knowing he was at peace, with his family at last.

_I was his family. And he was mine._

The thought made her stumble as she dismounted from her speeder, into the dust of Mos Eisley’s market.

Rey clutched her belly, fighting the need to retch. Those were the worst days, the ones where she couldn’t seem to avoid Ben’s memory, like a wound splitting her open. 

_Let the past die_ , he had said to her once. Rey wasn’t sure it could be done without letting herself die a little in the process. 

_The pain will fade,_ she had sworn to herself the day after the last battle. _It has to,_ she had repeated over and over as she buried Luke’s saber in the sand.

They won the war. She was alive, thanks to Ben’s sacrifice. It was enough. It _should_ have been enough.

But she was there, stuck on a desert planet, waiting for something that still had no name nor shape. 

Always waiting for someone that couldn’t come back. 

Leia’s words echoed in her memory, gentle and stern at the same time. 

_“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you see it, you'll never make it through the night.”_

A chirping beep brought her back to reality. If droids could express worry - and they totally could, in Rey’s opinion - BB-8 was the portrait of it. 

“I’m fine, little one,” she said, forcing a smile. It was harder and harder as the days went by, but she managed nonetheless. “Just a little tired. I haven’t slept well.”

The droid chirped and rolled behind her, as Rey stepped inside the spaceport, ready to lose herself in machinery and tech repairs. 

“Yes, I know. But we have work to do.”

***

He couldn’t explain why speed fascinated him so much. Nor why flying seemed to be second nature to him. Hell, he couldn’t even recall how he knew how to make the jump to hyperdrive, let alone steer a spaceship like the one he was currently on. 

This one was fast, the man thought as stars blurred together in a tunnel of flashing lights all around the cockpit. 

_But not as fast as…_

An alarm beeped and his hand darted on its own to switch off the compressor, like an unconscious reflex. 

The ship came to a sudden halt, and the never-ending darkness of space was suddenly filled with the barren silhouette of a red planet.

The console beeped, starting the countdown for another jump, but just before the shift, the man overrode the command. His gaze trained again on the barren sphere in front of him, darting to the main monitor to read its coordinates and name.

It didn’t sound familiar, but there was something that made him pause. 

A pull, a shift in the air, like a gravitational field, a string anchored to the center of his chest. 

A call, whispering words he couldn’t comprehend yet.

His hand made the choice for him - again, a reflex he couldn’t seem to control - and pushed the rudder down before his brain could catch up.

As the ship started its descent, the man asked himself if the anticipation he felt was another symptom of madness, along with his frustrating lack of memory.

He didn’t have the time to dwell on the state of his sanity, because as soon as he approached the only city emerging from the dunes, something hit the ship, making it rock and spin on itself.

He clutched the controls with both hands, trying to maintain some semblance of stability, as the shuttle gained speed and lost altitude. 

The man silenced the blaring alarm with a punch on the consolle, as he checked the damages. The upper half of his left wing was gone, while the solar cells covering its remaining part sizzled and burst, promising a deadly set of fireworks in the near future. 

The pilot tried to stabilize the route, but the ship shuddered around him with a sinister, metallic groan. Another blast flashed beside his right wing, luckily missing its target, while he managed to dodge another beam with a lucky call from his unexpectedly good reflexes.

As the ground approached faster and faster the man pulled the controls again, muscles trembling with the effort. He had to land somewhere, possibly without blowing himself up in the process. 

Maybe his descent on this blasted planet hadn’t been his brightest idea. 

There was a lesson to be learned from this mess, somewhere: his instinct was clearly not to be trusted again. 

The pilot’s eyes scanned the monitor in search of a docking bay. Several popped up on the screen, flashing lights pulsing in the middle of the city. He chose the farthest one, located at the very edge of the desert, hoping to get there in one piece and somehow unnoticed. 

_I have a bad feeling about this._

The thought made him shiver, stirring his mind like a stone thrown into a pond. 

But the pilot didn't have the time to overthink it, as he lowered the ship into a rusty platform, in the middle of a small courtyard. 

The shuttle touched the ground all but gently, the hull shuddering at the impact. Not his best landing so far, but it could have been worse.

The man unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the dented hatch with a frustrated kick.

Only to be greeted by the black barrel of a blaster.

“You have some nerve to land a First Order TIE Fighter here on Tatooine, of all places. Feeling suicidal, much?”

His eyes shifted from the blaster pointing at his chest to the old woman wielding it. Her white, curly hair shook in agitation as a couple of rusty droids beeped and rolled in panic beside her. She was tiny, her form barely fitting the worn mechanic suit she wore, 

He could easily outpower her, but her words were still ringing in his ears. 

“A First- _What_?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy! Be grateful I’m not shooting you on sight. Where are the others?”.

“What others?”

Wrong answer, given the snarl that followed.

“Enough! Get out.”

“Wasn’t I supposed to not move?”

 _Wrong, wrong answer,_ he immediately thought as the blaster’s barrel dug into his ribcage.

“Get. Out. Smartass.”

He did as told and kept his mouth shut.

Standing to his full height, the old woman seemed even more tiny, but she stood defiantly in front of his hulking frame without batting an eye. 

“Your name.”

Instead of a question mark, she punctuated her request with the sharp click of the charging weapon.

“I’m-”

He almost said _Rey_ , but his face flamed at the memory of what happened the first and last time he did so. 

Apparently, Rey wasn’t his name. 

Not only that, it was a _girl’s_ name, as the slimy alien who had refueled his ship on the Outer Rim had informed him with a mocking grin.

In retrospect, when you wake up on an unknown planet, remembering nothing except for a name, you shouldn’t assume it’s _yours_. Another lesson learned.

“I don’t remember it,” he blurted out.

“What?”

“My name,” the man confessed, dropping his gaze on the dusty floor of the courtyard. “I don’t remember it. I don’t have one.”

The woman observed him for a long time, her eyes narrowing in silence as she studied his dark clothes, the strange hole in his shirt that showed no scar underneath, his ruffled and greasy mop of dark hair, and ultimately his lack of a weapon.

“Former stormtrooper? Deserter?” she asked after a while, her blaster lowering imperceptibly. “I heard the First Order used to take children and brainwash them into soldiers. Maybe that’s why you don’t remember your name…”

“Not just my name,” the man added ruefully. “I don’t remember anything.”

At that, the weapon lowered until it pointed at the floor.

“Oh.”

 _Oh_ , indeed. 

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried remembering. He had spent his whole trip since departing from the strange and dark planet he had woken up on to the Outer Rim trying to grasp even a fragment of his past. 

But there was nothing, his mind blank. Only the lingering echo of voices that weren’t there anymore. And that name that elicited a shiver every time he said it out loud.

_Rey._

No, it wasn’t _his_ name, that was certain. But he felt like he had used it a lot. Spoken it a lot, three letters rolling effortlessly on his tongue, tingling on his lips. 

“Ok, here’s what we’ll do,” the woman suddenly said, waking him up from his musings. The blaster was resting in its holster, at her hip. “I won’t turn you in. But I’ll take the TIE as payment. All that tech is a blessing, and no one cares if their spare parts come from an enemy’s ship.”

With that, the old woman nudged him aside, already inspecting the TIE fighter behind him and assessing the value of her spoils. 

The man took a deep breath, the first one since his rough landing on Tatooine. 

Apparently, there was something wrong with the ship he had found after his awakening. 

_Enemy ship_ , the old woman had said. _Stormtrooper, brainwashing_. 

Was he one of the bad guys, as she had assumed? Or was he fighting them, before his memory was lost?

“Why are you here on Tatooine?” the woman asked, her eyes once again on him. 

Her gaze was different from before. Warmer, more human. She wasn’t looking at him the way she eyed the ship for spare parts and profit. That was something.

The man looked around, worrying his lips absentmindedly. 

“I don’t know.”

The mechanic scoffed and wiped her hands on the worn fabric of her coveralls. 

“Figures. Well, I s’pose you don’t have a place to stay or anything like that, do you?”

He shook his head, suddenly realizing the uncertainty of his predicament. 

The old woman sighed and shook her head, feigning resignation.

“You can stay here until you figure it out. But you’ll have to work. I can use an additional pair of hands…”

The droids, still hiding behind her boots, chirped in outrage.

“ _Human_ hands, you pricky tin-cans!” she muttered, gently kicking one of the droids aside. “By the way, I’m Peli. Peli Motto.”

Her wrinkled and greasy hand was so small in his huge one, the man thought as he shook it.

Small but warm. His palm tingled at the contact, and he flexed his fingers, relishing the touch as if it was the first one in a long time.

Maybe it was. 

“And now, let’s figure out what we should call you…”

  
  


***

  
  


The first time she heard about the First Order ship was nearly a month after her arrival on Tatooine. Whispered words about a TIE Fighter spotted in plain daylight and blasted by the anti-aircraft, disappearing at the edge of the desert. 

Maybe it was just an urban legend, but she couldn’t take any chances.

On her way back from her days in Mos Eisley she stopped more than once to explore the canyons and the edges of the Dune Sea. 

But there was nothing there for her. No wreckage or debris. No trace of First Order survivors. 

Rey should have felt relieved, but she spent the following nights swallowing back disappointed tears. 

_He’s not coming back_ , she repeated over and over, trying to persuade her hopeful and delusional heart. _He’s..._

She tossed and turned until a fretful sleep took her. 

She dreamt of Ach-to, that night. Drops of rain sliding on the Falcon’s hull and tickling her open palms, her awed and naive chuckles still vibrating in her ribcage. 

The air shifted and her heart with it. Giddiness and marvel burst through her like the Force, washing the pain and the loneliness away. He wasn't there but she could _feel_ him, so far and so close at the same time. 

When she woke up her hands were dry, but her cheeks were stained with salty water. 

The following day, Rey didn’t venture to the city, huddling up in her little workshop - an ex storage room now stuffed with tools and spare parts - to get caught up with repairs. 

She was halfway through the frustrating task of polishing a sand-stuck compressor when she heard the unmistakable sound of a Jawas’ Sandcrawler. She greeted the merchants on her doorstep, a few minutes later.

It was there, in the amassed pile of metal and wires exposed for her to buy, that she saw it. The unmistakable hexagonal shape, the solar cells, the black durasteel borders. It was a TIE Fighter’s wing. Or better, what remained of it. The burnt and ragged-edged pieces in her hands were the obvious remains of an airstrike.

“Where did you find this?” she asked the Jawas, dread seizing her chest.

The creatures answered in their loud tongue, speaking of a bargain made a few days prior in a docking bay of Mos Eisley.

The piece of durasteel and carbonite dug into her palm, but Rey didn’t feel it.

Her mind was elsewhere, cautiously touching the edge of her consciousness, bracing itself for the familiar pain that usually followed when she tested the remains of the broken bond. 

But this time there was no painful void in that silent corner of herself. Only hope. 

  
  


***

“Maybe you weren’t a stormtrooper. Maybe you were a tech guy, or… Dunno, a mechanic or something like that?”

The man chuckled, blushing slightly at the hidden praise in Peli’s words. 

After a week working at the docking bay, it turned out he was somehow a skilled mechanic.

A very skilled one, if Peli’s surprised expression when he managed to disassemble and rebuild an entire ionic engine in less than an hour, was of any indication. 

“Maybe. But I feel like I belong in the cockpit of a very fast starship…”

“Please!” Peli snorted. “You forget I saw your not-so-smooth landing. Nothing to be proud about it, trust me.”

Something pulled at the edges of his mouth, and the man found himself grinning without really noticing. 

“ _Emergency_ landing. With a wing-and-a-half and a busted compressor. I think I did more than great given the circumstances.”

After their rocky start, Peli had been surprisingly amicable towards her unnamed guest, but a week later, still profiting from his talented hands and stripped ship, their relationship was taking an even brighter turn, if the playful banter was any indication. 

The old mechanic was rough around the edges, but she treated him well and true to her words, had graced him with a spare room and a couple of meals every day.

“Don’t be cocky, Klaud,” she muttered.

The name-guessing had started right away at the beginning of their deal. Every day Peli would try a different name, claiming that he would recognize his own, if he heard it. 

The problem was that she was starting to get a little too creative with her choices.

The man lifted his head from the remains of a once-functioning engine, arching one dark eyebrow inquisitively.

“Klaud? Is that the best you can come up with?”

Peli shrugged, barely hiding a grin.

“A name like any other. Why, does it ring a bell?”

“Absolutely not.”

 _Thank the Maker_ , he added mentally. That name made him think about a heavy, lazy slug. 

"Whatever you say, Marvin."

Peli was relentless that morning, shooting different names every time she opened her mouth.

“Pass me the screwdriver, Lemer."

"The stabilizer is somehow intact, we could make at least 500 credits from it. What d'you say, Fenek?"

"Larry, give me a hand!"

Ghaul. Maurice. Paul.

"Ben!"

The man lifted his head so fast his neck hurt, the wrecked compressor he was working on completely forgotten.

In front of him, framed by the rusty threshold of the station, stood a girl. 

She was dressed in a white tunic, stained at the knees, and her chestnut hair was tied up in three cute buns. Hazel eyes pinned him where he was, wide like the open space and so full of emotion he felt he could drown in them.

The man felt his heart beating violently in his chest, almost painfully, as if it was ready to burst his ribcage open and run to her.

He barely heard Peli's voice next to him as she greeted the girl. "Ah, Miss Skywalker."

The name stirred something in him. A blur, a shudder. But it didn't quite match the figure ahead of him, the slip of a girl with freckled cheeks and trembling lips that still gaped at him. It slid over her without catching properly, like a shirt too big for her lithe frame, a discordance.

But he knew her name, the man realized.

It clicked in his head effortlessly, vibrating through his chest and throat, finally reaching his lips, where it belonged.

"Rey."

  
  


***

She couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

Gone was the heat, the sweaty tunic sticking uncomfortably to her back, Peli's voice.

Reality faded away, reduced to a single figure in front of her, a name she had longed to say out loud once more. He was in front of her, solid and clear and alive, impossibly handsome and still in the clothes she had last seen him when…

No, Rey shuddered. 

She would not think of his death while Ben Solo was there and alive, a few feet from her.

"Ben," she repeated, ignoring how her voice broke. 

He looked as stunned as she, still rooted on the spot, grease staining his long fingers and the corner of his plush lips.

The same lips she…

Rey darted forward, colliding violently with his wide frame, relishing its hardness and the muffled "ow" he breathed out at the impact.

Her arms wound themselves around his chest, clutching him to her, never letting go.

She couldn't stop saying his name, repeating it like a prayer, muffled by his shirt and her tears.

_Ben. Ben, her Ben._

Only then she noticed he hadn't hugged her back. His arms were still limp at his sides, hands trembling slightly.

She lifted her head, meeting his stunned gaze once again. He seemed so lost. 

Terrified.

"Ben, what-"

"Are you her?" He blurted out, interrupting her, and Rey felt the world shift under her feet.

"Are you Rey?"

  
  



	2. Second chance (coming back to yours)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no Rey Palpatine, the last Jedi, nor Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.  
> Forgotten among the dunes of Tatooine, chatting and smiling while tending to broken pieces of tech, they were finally allowed to be Just Rey and Just Ben.
> 
> In this chapter you'll find:  
> \- Good boy Sweater  
> \- Alternative use of the Red String of Fate  
> Oh, and Shirtless!Ben because of REASONS

_"Talk to me when it's dark_

_Take us back to the start_

_Oh, forget my soul, I'm coming back to yours,_

_I'm coming back to yours"_

("Yours", Lucia)

Ben. His name was Ben.

He rolled those three letters in his mind like a treasure found, something that was long lost in the darkness and now shone brightly like a newborn star.

And the girl. _Rey._

She was familiar and new all at once. Warm and solid, like her arms wrapped around him. His skin tingled at the contact, his whole being suddenly hungry for that type of connection.

She knew him. Or she had known the man he was before losing his memory.

Ben felt a pang of guilt, knowing that man was lost to them both, gone along with his past. 

He could see the exact moment she understood.

She immediately let go of him, taking a step back, and the sense of loss that pervaded him was almost painful. 

"You don't remember."

It wasn't a question. It hurt like a blade twisting in his gut. He shook his head.

"I'm sorry."

"But you know my name."

Rey blinked and something shone in her eyes, barely a flickr but _there_. Hope.

"It was the only thing in my mind when I woke up," he admitted, trying to keep that flame alive, as if it was his new and only mission in life.

She nodded, apparently still lost in thoughts.

"Well, I guess we finally found out your name, _Ben_."

The grip of Peli's hand on his shoulder woke him up from his daze, making him startle.

The old mechanic looked at him, her mouth curved in a rueful smile. "It suits you."

Then she turned to the girl - _Rey_ , her name was Rey - while nudging him towards her once again.

"This fella here dropped from the sky a week ago and has been with me since, given he can't seem to remember anything. I guess he could use some more information, and so could I."

With that, Peli nodded towards a wobbly table, surrounded by upturned buckets for seats.

"Make yourself comfortable, miss Skywalker. I'll make some tea."

**

Rey couldn't stop looking at him. She would have never let go of him either, but she imagined Ben needed some space after the abrupt revelation of his own name.

Tears welled in her eyes, as joy and sorrow still battled furiously in her chest.

He didn't remember anything. His father, Luke, Leia. Herself.

_But he did_ , her mind remarked. He did remember her, somehow.

And he was _alive_. Painfully so, her heart breaking at the onslaught of relief and joy that swept her off her feet her at every subtle glance she stole. 

Rey drank him up like a gulp of water at the end of an endless run, relishing in the small details of him that screamed 'Ben Solo', the ones she already knew - the way he worried and pressed his lips while thinking, his too-intense eyes studying her - and the ones that were still foreign to her, like the shy and clumsy way he averted her gaze when she caught him staring at her, or the way the tops of his ears peeking from his mop of dark hair reddened just slightly every time that occurred. 

This Ben was uncharted territory, and she was eager to discover every part of him. 

But that didn’t explain how he ended up on Tatooine, of all places, _alive_ and real after...

How was it even possible? Was she dreaming? Had she fallen from her speeder on her way to the docking bay and lost consciousness?

"Please, tell me," she tried after a while, her voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. "Tell me what you remember."

His deep, dark eyes zeroed in on her, stealing her breath. Their intensity was so familiar and yet new - _alive alive alive_ \- that Rey fought the urge to laugh and cry at the same time. 

"I woke up nearly a month ago on a strange planet surrounded by debris and a sunken Starfleet."

_His voice_. How much she had missed his voice. The last time she had heard it he was still calling himself Kylo Ren and asking her to go to Exegol with him.

And as an answer she had wielded her saber and...

"I don't know why I was there, or what happened," Ben added, eyes trailing on the floor as she tried to get rid of her own unpleasant memories. "I found the only working shuttle and left, wandering the Outer Rim until I came here. But on the descent, someone shot me down, and I ended up here."

His fingers - she could still feel them splayed on her belly, intertwined with her own - drifted through his hair in frustration. 

"I couldn't remember anything. Not even my name. Except…"

"Me."

His lower lip trembled when their eyes met once again, and Rey had to bite her tongue to avoid screaming at him _remember me, hold me, kiss me._

"Yes," he mumbled. "Just you."

"You must have met during the war."

Peli's voice startled her, almost making her fall from her precarious seating. She was munching unceremoniously on some kind of dried meat, watching them with an amused glint in her eyes. “Weren’t you in the Resistance, girl?” she asked Rey, quirking one eyebrow. “‘Cause it looks like you _fraternized_ with the enemy, big time. Forbidden love and all that angst… Maker, I _live_ for this shit! It’s better than a holo.”

Rey felt her jaw unhinge and drop on the dirty floor, while Ben sputtered and stammered, his ears and cheeks turning red at the suggestion.

"Wh- No! We're not…" He swallowed and turned to her once again, eyes suddenly panicked and unsure. "Are we?"

Rey tried to think of an answer, and fast. She couldn't exactly drop a bomb on him.

_"Oh, you were the Supreme Leader of the First Order. But I, the last Jedi left and ironically Palpatine's heir, had the brilliant idea to fall in love with you while we connected across the stars and held hands telepathically through our dyad-or-something Force Bond."_

Nope.

She couldn’t blow her cover, either. Nobody knew she was the last Jedi. Before Peli’s and everyone else’s eyes on Tatooine, she was just a nobody, a distant relative of the Skywalkers that once upon a time lived at the edge of the desert. 

"You were... a spy. For the Resistance," she finally blurted out, momentarily cheering at her spark of improvisation. "You were working undercover in the First Order, passing info to the Resistance. A radar technician. We met during one of your, er- _transmissions_ and became... friends. Sort of. We fought together too, a couple of times. And in the final battle against the Emperor. You saved us all, you saved _me_. But when everything was over you just… disappeared."

It wasn't the truth, but it couldn’t be called a straight up lie either. 

Rey bit the inside of her cheek, waiting for her silent audience to process her unlikely and totally improvised tale and call her out.

Instead, Peli clapped her hands and grinned. 

"See?" She said, patting Ben's shoulder once again. "I knew it, you couldn't be First Order scum."

He simply snorted as the ghost of a smile curled the edges of his lips - _why couldn’t she stop looking at them, anyway?_

"Well, then it's fortunate you didn't turn me in as soon as I landed, no questions asked," Ben retorted gruffly as the mechanic finished her muddy tea in one single sip and went back to work.

"But I didn't. Because I knew in my heart you weren't a bad guy. Miss Skywalker, please feel free to stay as long as you please," she added, throwing them a knowing smirk from over her shoulder. "I think you have some more issues to discuss with your _friend_."

As soon as the old woman was gone, the silence fell once again between them. 

Rey could sense Ben's nerves, thrumming and buzzing through his big body; if the bond between them still worked, it would’ve been full of silent questions. 

But the corner of herself that was Ben’s - always Ben’s - was silent. Not abruptly torn and bleeding like before, but silent and waiting, almost in anticipation.

Rey swallowed the lump stuck in her throat, choosing to speak the only truth she knew. 

"I thought I had lost you forever."

Ben's eyes softened, wariness and tension turning into something impossibly gentle and warm, full of promises and relief and possibilities. 

She knew that look. It was the last thing she remembered before...

"I'm not going anywhere."

His voice was deep and sure, unwavering. 

Rey held onto it with all herself and nodded, a tear finally escaping the dull fortress of her eyes.

The warmth of his fingers on her cheek, as he gently swept away the smudge of salty water, was everything she had ever wanted. The Force vibrated through her, soaring in triumph at the visceral _rightness_ of it all.

"I know," she whispered, her hand covering the huge one still cradling her face.

They stayed like that for a long time until her heart steadied itself and Ben’s cheek were a little less crimson.

After a while, he cleared his voice and withdrew his hand from her face - but he didn’t let go of hers, Rey noticed. 

"Care to tell me something more about this war I apparently helped end?"

She did. 

Only, she left out some details. Names, for instance. Their names, to be precise.

She told him about the war. She told him the story of a lonely girl, born from nothing, that one day met the Resistance and discovered the Force had awakened in her. 

She told him about the First Order and the way it rose from the ashes of the fallen Empire while the Galaxy grew complacent and ignored every blaring signal of danger.

She even managed to hide the quiver in her voice at the mention of Kylo Ren and his quest to find the last Jedi.

It was strange and heartbreaking to see Ben's frown as he learned about the son of Princess Leia, an ex-padawan turned to the dark side after his own uncle and master had attempted to take his life, afraid of his inner demons. 

She watched him, as he pondered his own tragic descent into the Darkness as an outsider, but feeling and understanding the pain and injustice of it all. She could see it in the sharp jolt of his jaw, in the way he worried at his plump lips, pressing them in a thin and tense line as Rey explained the influence of Palpatine and Supreme Leader Snoke on his mind, under the guise of his grandfather's mythical figure, the Sith Lord, Darth Vader.

She told him about the Falcon, the map that lead to the last Jedi master, the legacy saber, Takodana. 

His hands paused while he was polishing the outer ring of a reactor, eyebrows reaching his hairline, as she told him about the kidnapping of the Jedi girl.

"He did _what_?"

Rey suppressed a chuckle, basking in Ben's outrage at his own past actions.

"Yes, Kylo Ren kidnapped the girl and brought her to Starkiller Base to breach her mind and find the route to his former master."

“Did he succeed?”

Rey thought about their first meeting. The fear his masked figure had instilled in her, the thrill of seeing the same mask lifted from his face at her own request. He had been cruel and beautiful at the same time, entering her mind in a way she now recognized as somehow gentle, stealing her secrets and giving his own in exchange, even if not willingly.

“No. He managed to see her mind, but he lost himself in her as well,” she confessed. “In that moment of connection she saw his fears, she stole bits of his training and knowledge with the Force. Even as a prisoner, strapped to a chair, she was the true winner of that first fight between them.”

Ben snorted, resuming his cleaning duty. 

His voice boomed in the hollow shell of the reactor. 

“Why do I have the feeling she will whip his ass in every following fight, too?”

Rey couldn’t contain her startled laugh at his educated guess.

“And why do you think that?”

Ben turned to look her in the eyes before answering.

“Because she’s clearly stronger than she knows. And it’s never a good idea to mess with strong women. She will shred him to pieces before this story is over, I can tell.” 

Rey blinked. It was… an interesting take on the events that had led them to the present moment. Not entirely wrong, if she thought about the scar she had given him and what occurred among the ruins of the Death Star and on Exegol and…

A shiver ran down her spine at the image of his limp body, slowly fading in front of her. 

“Hey, are you alright?”

When Rey opened her eyes Ben was crouching in front of her, wiping his hands with a stained rag. She nodded, fighting another shudder, but his hands were already wrapped around her, one trailing soothingly along her back.

“I’m fine,” she rasped a handful of minutes after, breathing him in. “Just... Hold me? Please.”

Ben didn’t hesitate, and if he thought her request was strange, he didn’t comment on it. 

He was warm and solid around her, his steady heartbeat thrumming against her forehead when she leant into his chest. 

_Alive, he is alive_ , she repeated over and over in her mind, until the panic subsided. 

The bond hummed in her mind, finally quiet. Content.

“I’m fine now.”

  
  


***

She was always there. Day after day, Rey was becoming a constant in his new life. A beautiful constant, in his own opinion. 

She would join Peli and Ben in the mornings, after selling her water at the marketplace, sometimes bringing her own repair work with her, and they would solder and clean piece after piece in a quiet, content silence.

Other times she would sit beside him, simply watching him with her green-hazel eyes, a distant longing in their depths that Ben was sure mirrored his own. It was so strange to yearn for something he couldn’t remember.

He would ask her small question about herself, eager to know her better and even the field between them.

She was from Jakku, an orphan abandoned to a hard life of scavenging and survival - the rage that had swelled inside him at her confession was so vicious and dark Ben could still feel its bitter taste on his tongue from time to time - until she had helped a deserter and his droid to escape the First Order and join the Resistance. 

"I stayed with them after that," she had said, a rueful smile blooming on her lips. "I felt like I needed to find my place in the big universe. A cause, a home. The belonging I was looking for."

"And was that it? Your home?"

The way Rey smiled at his question - her eyes full of unspoken words and hope, so much _hope_ \- he would never forget.

"Not exactly. But I think I'm on the right route to get there."

He was starting to suspect they had been more than friends once. How could he explain the turmoil in his heart every time she was near. The spark of electricity that every accidental brush of her fingers caused on his skin. The way her rare laughter made his chest clench and his lips curve on their own in a dumb grin that he couldn’t wipe from his face even after she was gone. Peli teased him endlessly for that.

Rey was witty and smart and clearly strong. He once watched her lift a sixty pound engine without breaking a sweat, and he still blushed thinking about how much he had appreciated the view. Especially a certain part of his anatomy.

But coiled muscles and clever fingers aside, Rey was also the most beautiful person he knew. Nevermind the fact that his universe included exactly two people at the moment.

She was brave but kind, fierce but inherently fragile. He could see it in the way she withdrew into herself from time to time. Her armor was tough but her loneliness seeped through the cracks and trickled from her eyes when she looked at him, thinking he wouldn't notice.

And Ben wanted to dispel that loneliness, wanted to give in to the urge to hold her and tell her she wasn't alone, not anymore, but he didn't know how to do it without sounding like a total creep. 

She was so beautiful - perfect in her own broken way.

And she always knew how to take him by surprise.

“Take off your shirt.”

Ben nearly dropped the solder, catching it just in time not to melt half of his foot away.

He turned it off, trying to regain some sort of composure and not let her see how much her abrupt request had affected him.

“Wh-What? _Why_?” he croaked, wincing at the obvious quiver in his voice.

_Very smooth, buddy._

Rey arched one elegant eyebrow, clearly amused by his reaction, and nodded at his chest, eyes trailing to a point above his fourth rib on the right. Or: the very noticeable hole in his tunic. 

“You can’t go around with a ripped shirt,” she said, retrieving a needle and a piece of red thread from her pocket. “I can mend it, if you want...”

Ah, his little scavenger. Always looking for broken things to repair. 

Ben cleared his throat and shrugged. 

“Oh. Okay.”

Laying the solder on the floor, he swiftly grabbed the neck of his shirt and pulled it off, briefly struggling to untangle the long sleeves from the working gloves he forgot to take off beforehand.

When he finally managed to hand the mass of rumpled fabric to Rey, her eyes were wide as the binary suns of Tatooine and definitely planted on his bare chest.

_Interesting._

He tried to hide his rising blush with a smirk.

"That good?"

Rey snorted, her freckled nose scrunching adorably at his quip, and tore the shirt from his outstretched hand.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before…” she muttered, busying herself with the task at hand, adding something under her breath that sounded suspiciously close to _smartass_.

His lips twitched, and Ben tried to hide his grin. Maybe he wasn’t alone in this strange fascination with one another. 

Rey’s brows furrowed as she sewed, and Ben watched, mesmerized, as her tongue peeked out from her lips as she concentrated on the most difficult stitches. She was so good at repairing machines, but seeing her so clumsy and unsure with such a mundane act was doing something to his heart. 

“There,” she said after a while, cutting the excess thread with her teeth and handing the shirt back to him with a triumphant smile. 

Her stitches were uneven and blotchy, the zigzagged red line standing out from the dark fabric like a bleeding wound. Healed, mended. Whole. 

Where once was a hole, now there was a scar.

Ben felt a sharp tug at his heart as he traced the jagged line with the point of his index finger.

His silence must have stretched too long because Rey started fidgeting with the remaining thread beside him.

“I know I’m not good at it. And I could only find red thread, so it’s not pretty...”

“I like red,” he interrupted her, pulling the shirt over his head and across his chest.

For some reason it felt right to bear her mark on him.

“Thank you,” he added, smiling at her. “Actually, I think it looks kinda badass.”

That made her laugh, and Ben felt a weight lift from his rib cage at the sound.

She suddenly got up to rummage in her bag, turning to hand him another piece of clothing. It was a jacket, the brown leather a little worn out and frayed at the cuffs, but clearly still sturdy with all its reinforced pads.

“To complete the scoundrel look,” Rey added, clearly pleased at his mute appreciation.

Ben shook his head, not bothering to hide the ever-present smile on his face.

“You shouldn’t have…”

Rey interrupted his musings with a shrug.

“It’s no big deal. A merchant didn’t have enough credits for the water I was selling today, and offered this thing as payment. It’s too big for me, anyway.”

It was clearly a lie, but Ben was too enamored with her gift - or her, in general - to call her out on it. So he put the jacket on, relishing in its warmth against the crisp air of the evening.

He clasped her hand in his own, preening at how small it looked between his bigger fingers. 

Small but incredibly strong. Beautiful.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

He didn’t know where the soft term of endearment had come from, but Ben didn’t miss the way Rey startled at its sound or the way her eyes lowered to his lips. 

Only then he noticed the second sun was starting to set. Rey must have seen the dread in his eyes because she got up, letting go of his hand as if burned. 

“I should head home before it’s too dark.”

He nodded, observing her hasty retreat and the way she so desperately tried to hide the rising blush on her cheeks with the scarf she wrapped around her head like a turban.

“Same time tomorrow?” he blurted when she was almost out of the garage, hoping to sound nonchalant and collected and failing miserably.

Rey paused on the threshold, eyes big and shining over her shoulder.

“If you don’t mind the company...”

“I’ll wait for you.”

She smiled at his hasty answer, nodding and leaving for good.

It was Peli’s voice, much later, that woke him up from his daze.

“No mooning during work!”

Ben almost let the solder fall - again.

“What? I’m not-”

Just then he realized it was already dark and he had been staring at the empty threshold with a dreamy grin on his face for at least an hour. 

At his embarrassed gaping, the old mechanic just sighed and shook her head, handing him a cup of warm broth.

“God, you kids are hopeless...”

  
  


**

If Kylo Ren, broody and borderline-rude Kylo Ren, had managed to spike her curiosity and attraction, Rey should have anticipated that she never stood a chance against Ben Solo. 

Gentle and understanding Ben Solo, with his dimpled smile - Rey had stumbled on her own feet the first time he had laughed in her presence - and the quiet, carefree way he carried himself, so different from the stiff stalking of his former Supreme Leader self.

It was like having a glimpse of the past, Rey thought. An unadulterated glimpse of a long lost time when the voices in his head were silent and there was no darkness on the horizon. A glimpse of what could have been - of _who_ Ben Solo could have been, if life or fate had been fair to him.

Rey knew it wasn’t right to indulge in this beautiful and foreign fantasy by not telling him the truth about their former identities, but she couldn’t help herself.

It felt like finding something good for once among the wreckage; like finally having a shot at something unimaginable: a normal life.

A second chance. 

The possibility to live and fall in love naturally, unhurriedly, without the Force meddling, without the war or the sparks of their clashing lightsabers between them. 

There was no Rey Palpatine, the last Jedi, nor Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

Forgotten among the dunes of Tatooine, chatting and smiling while tending to broken pieces of tech, they were finally allowed to be Just Rey and Just Ben.

Just Ben was beautiful, fresh and new, but Rey loved the sense of familiarity he still elicited in her, too. 

He was still intense, his emotions always showing on his expressive face, despite his efforts to hide the way the tips of his ears flushed adorably. He was stubborn, like Leia had been, but intrinsically quiet, preferring to withdraw into himself instead of speaking his thoughts out loud. 

He tried - without much success - to cover his shyness with a cockiness that didn’t fully belong to him and reminded her of Han. 

Rey didn’t tell him that, keeping her grief to herself while she narrated the events that took place on Starkiller Base.

Her heart broke once again at the pain and confusion written on Ben’s features, after she told him how Kylo Ren had killed his own father.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered after a while, sitting beside her during a break from his work. “Why did he do such a thing?”

Rey took his hand, not knowing how to comfort someone who didn’t remember his mistakes but could still feel the lingering pain of them.

“He was being torn apart,” she explained, recalling his own words. “His master Snoke had convinced him that the only way to be free of that pain was to cut all ties with his past. Even his own family.”

_He tried to kill Ben Solo once and for all_ , Rey though making her blood boil with rage. 

“But he was wrong,” she added after a while, recalling her own confusion and pain. “Killing his father only worsened the conflict in him, the act leaving Kylo Ren more unbalanced and broken than ever.”

Ben was silent beside her, and Rey turned to study his reaction. He was worrying his lips, grinding his jaw and trying not to spill the tears already swelling in his dark eyes.

_You were right Han, your son is alive,_ Rey thought, wishing to be able to tell the old scoundrel herself. He came back home, at last.

_He came back to me._

Ben’s fingers twitched between hers, squeezing her hand. He cleared his throat, trying to hide the way his voice cracked with his next words.

“What happened to the Jedi girl?”

Rey let her thumb slide over his knuckles, a small gesture more likely to soothe her than him.

“She had escaped, meanwhile. And she was helping the Resistance to blow up the base before they could erase another planet with its main weapon. But Kylo Ren found her while she was leaving. They fought among the snow, the Jedi girl using her new saber and powers to slash Ren’s face and defeat him.”

“Did she kill him?”

Rey could still feel the frosty bite of the snow on her skin, and for a moment she was there, surrounded by tall, dark trees, with a defeated man at her mercy. It felt like a lifetime ago, someone that wasn’t her, that wasn’t them.

“She almost did it,” she whispered. “Something kept telling her to do it, to kill him. To avenge Han’s death, to end it once and for all. But…”

There was no scar on the face before her. Only beauty marks, the shadow of a scruffy goatee and the warmth of a pair of dark chocolate eyes, waiting for her response.

“She couldn’t do it,” she confessed. “Anyway, right after that the planet started to crumble. A chasm parted the earth between them, allowing the Resistance and the Jedi girl to escape the base before its destruction.”

Silence fell between them, broken only by the metallic sounds of the working droids on the other side of the docking bay and Peli’s shouted orders for them. 

“Serves him right,” Ben muttered after a while, getting up and looking almost desperately for a distraction. “Do you want to eat something before getting back to work?”

Before Rey could answer, her stomach growled in appreciation, eliciting her embarrassed wince and Ben’s smile. 

“You don’t have to… I’m not that hungry,” Rey protested half-heartedly.

“Are you kidding? You’re always hungry,” he chuckled, tugging their still-joined hands to lead her outside the docking bay and towards the marketplace. “C’mon, sweetheart. Let me buy you some food.”

Rey let him guide her outside, already full with the warmth spreading in her belly at his touch and words.

***

The nightmares started briefly after that. 

He dreamt of a little girl curled up in the wreckage of an Imperial AT-AT, hunger and loneliness tormenting her sleep. He dreamt of a wall marked with thousands of tiny scratches, neatly and painfully ordered into countless lines.

He dreamt of a forest, a dark monster stalking the Jedi girl, her white robes swirling behind her like the feathers of a panicked bird. 

Be tried to follow her, to warn her that the monster was near, his bloody hands already reaching for her. He screamed as the girl fell limp in front of the dark cloaked figure stalking her, too late to save her.

When the soulless eyes of his mask settled on him among the trees, Ben felt ice settling into his heart. He stared into the darkness, a twisted sense of deja-vu freezing him on the spot. He could see himself through the eyes of the monster until the scene changed.

Blurred images flashed through his mind. Snow on a dark forest painted in black and white with a strike of red slashing through it like a bleeding wound. 

A scream, explosions. Pain, so much pain.

The Jedi girl, ready to strike with her saber at Kylo Ren. 

Only, he was the one in Ren’s place, waiting for the final blow to end his miserable life.

The girl’s face morphed into Rey’s, her delicate features twisted into a feral snarl.

_Kill him kill him kill him_ , a choir of voices urged her on, while the world crumbled and terror froze his bones and heart.

The moment the lightsaber came down on him, he woke with a muffled scream. 

Ben’s hand flew to his face, but there was no blood on his cheek, only cold sweat and tears. He tried to calm his breathing and his raging heart with images of Rey, the real one.

Her smiles, the warmth of her slim fingers gripping his hand or working on his mended shirt. The way she blushed whenever he called her Sweetheart or caught her staring at him. 

The next day he took every chance he got to touch her, letting their fingers graze as she passed him a tool, or bending down to swipe a trace of grease from her cheek with his thumb. 

The stolen touches comforted him, anchored him to the present, solid and clear under his fingers. 

If she minded, she didn’t say anything about it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! <3 I'm so moved by your reactions and support to this fic! I cannot thank you enough <3
> 
> I'm still trying to untangle some loose plot lines, but I'm getting there. I want to put in there so many things, symbols, and concepts. I just hope to be able to, without making a mess. ^^"
> 
> As always thank you to my wonderful beta-reader [1VulgarWoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1VulgarWoman/pseuds/1VulgarWoman). You're the best!


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